An issue I always have with early retirement is whether it is morally acceptable. When retiring early from a skilled profession you are depriving society of a big contribution you could have given, that was also expected and invested in by society. Utilising a power dynamic by having more money and knowledge to capitalise on other people exacerbates this issue.
How are you dealing with this? Are you of the mindset that you do not owe anything to society? That it is completely fair, as you earned that money and there is a perfect market that trades all aspects in a meritocratic fashion (e.g., delayed consumption should be gratified this hard)? Or that you were not just lucky to have the talents to earn so much money?
Firstly, I don’t think your contributions to society are limited to work. Spending time with hobbies also contributes, e.g. art, volunteering, or open source coding. You can also work a more enjoyable “job” in retirement, without feeling strangled by the paycheck.
We also already have enough production in society for everyone to be happy, and many people’s jobs do not actually contribute to society in a meaningful way, e.g. people who work at advertising firms. I think we should target the billionaires sucking up literally all the resources and seeing if “early” retirement is actually a problem at that point. People are working until they’re 70 right now, but maybe everyone could retire closer to 50 if we distributed our resources more fairly.
